Rode the Six Hundred
by Angelic Sentinel
Summary: Ashley as she faces death on Virmire. Written in remembrance of D-Day.


"I will not go gentle, you assholes."

Ashley grabs her assault rifle. The bomb's going off in minutes. Her CO isn't coming. She takes a deep breath, kills another fire team of geth as they approach her position. She can attempt to run, but she won't make it in time. There's no way she'll make it out of the blast range, not with that bomb's payload.

So she shoots geth, and doesn't think, but as the mechanical bodies pile up she can't help but think anyway. Something about her feels curiously numb as she dodges the rocket from a Geth Trooper, something inherently laughable about avoiding death now only to meet it a scant few minutes later. But she can't let them reach that bomb, and she's at a good bottleneck. The walls of the compound funnel them all into her gun's sights. Mostly.

She's not sure she's ready to meet it. And even though she's accepted it—at least on the surface—something about her wonders, _Why me?_ Was she not good enough? But's she's been living on borrowed time anyway since the death of the 212 on Eden Prime; this is the only way it could have gone down. She asked for this. She knows it's the right choice. There could have only been one choice.

But she knows it's too late to wonder about such things. Tennyson had a poem about that, didn't he? "Thiers not to reason why / Theirs but to do and die." She quotes as she blasts the flashlight head off another one of the geth. "Into the Valley of Death rode the six hundred."

The Crimean War. The Light Brigade, funneled by Cossack sharpshooters into a ravine. Bad orders. But good soldiers. A senseless waste. "Cannon to the left of them / Cannon to the right of them / Cannon in front of them," she says as the geth attempt to circle and flank her. She shoots them all before they come in too close. She's a damn good soldier. And she can't think of this as a bad order, not when it saves the galaxy. And Shepard…a small smile plays on her lips as she thinks about them. A good Commander. No regrets. She wishes she could have known Shepard better.

_God, help me be at peace with this. Please._ She's not. But she doesn't want to think about it anymore.

One woman against a platoon of geth? Ashley smirks. _I like those odds._ Her assault rifle overheats; she switches to her shotgun, blowing a wide swath through the approaching geth. Her Valley of Death. "And though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff comfort me," she says, familiar words from her childhood echoing here beyond her years.

Back to the groundside house she'd shared with all her sisters, and her mother, and her father who tried his best for all of them.

She ducks down behind cover as her kinetic barriers finally dissipate. She types lightning fast at her omnitool, trying to get her shields up in time, but it's too late, a large bore bullet tears straight through her shoulder and it knocks her flat on her back at the same time one catches her stomach. As she struggles to sit up, she gasps out, "Thou preparest a table before me in my presence of my enemies," she coughs up blood as she finally kneels behind cover, hacking a dark glob of mucus and blood on the ground. And what a table it was. Geth, geth, and more geth and a bomb. A small reprieve in the midst of endless waves of geth.

_And fuck, is that a Prime? Damn it!_

She falls back, moving closer to the bomb. "Half a league, half a league, / Half a league onward," she tells herself as she forces herself forward. Time has no meaning here. She staggers onward, switching to her assault rifle again as she gains distance. She spares a brief glance up to the rain. She can't feel it, but it's soaking her helmet. "You anoint my head with oil. My cup runneth over," she says, mostly to keep her thoughts straight. She learned it by rote such a long time ago, and it helps keep her calm now.

She thinks of her sister Sarah, there at the last and the rest. Hugs. Conversations they would never have again. Her other sisters. How they will react to the news. Tears. Hurt. They are close, Ashley and her family, and her loss will devastate them.

"Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life." All three minutes of it. She snorts and starts laughing. She can't help it, must be a reaction to the adrenaline. Life is infinitely precious, and she'll take what she can get. Three minutes isn't so bad anyway. It's a hell of a good life, even if it's short.

_Twenty-five years isn't so bad, anyway._

"And I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever." She doesn't notice the tears in her eyes as her breath becomes more labored. The medigel's sealed up the wound, but it doesn't do anything about internal bleeding. Chances are she'll die before the bomb even goes off. That's okay. As long as the bomb goes off. She just can't let the geth get to the bomb.

She closes her eyes on the sands of Virmire and pictures different sands that her some-great grandfather walked centuries ago. The battle that gave name to her ship. The _Normandy._ She sees it take off in the distance and knows she's done her part. They made it off safely. She can die at peace now.

Some part of her grieves the loss of what will never be. "Back from the open mouth of Hell," she coughs again, blood spattering her Phoenix armor. "What was left of them. All that was left of the six hundred. Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy / I am a part of all that I have met." She's mixing her poems. Tennyson's running together, and she can't think. But all the people she's met, all the lives she has touched—she'll forever be a part of their memories. And hell, asari live a long time. Maybe she will owe Dr. T'Soni one.

And if this isn't hell, it's sure as hell close. She laughs, one last sputtering cough, and the bomb goes off, igniting her world in a blast of fire and light.


End file.
